billpg

5 ms·

1.
Ask HN: Redirect-to-www on a dot-dev domain?
1 points by billpg 2mo ago|0 comments
2.
Oh no I've invented SVG badly(owl.billpg.com)
1 points by billpg 2mo ago|0 comments
3.
Am I worried AI will take my job?(owl.billpg.com)
2 points by billpg 2mo ago|0 comments
4.
by billpg 3mo ago
I once developed for PC-GEOS, which wanted all memory in exactly 8K sized blocks. I wrote a set of C macros that presented an array-of-arrays as a single collection by using mod/divide operations on the index.
5.
by billpg 3mo ago
shrug I've reviewed what I originally wrote and I prefer the text I published. Sure, I could review it all myself (indeed I used to) but that takes time and it was becoming a barrier to actually publishing stuff. Maybe I'd have
6.
by billpg 3mo ago
I kinda wish they had. 64k windows with no overlap would make segment registers a slightly inconvenient 32-bit address register. I get why hey didn't. Someone might want to run two processes each with its own segment, but the whole mac
7.
by billpg 3mo ago
Hi. I wrote it, and I'm a human. (Or at least I think I am.) I did use an AI for spell-checking, punctuation, generally making it flow, but its all my text. You think a machine is going to come up with "near pointers, far pointers
8.
by billpg 3mo ago
1992-author (me) is wondering if he'll ever get a girlfriend. (And I completely agree.)
9.
by billpg 3mo ago
Why would you ever want a single 64k object? That's like an entire machine's worth of memory!
10.
by billpg 3mo ago
Indeed, I say as much at the end. But what should Intel have done? They needed a CPU that can run 8080 code but with more memory. Also it's the year ~1980 and we're limited to the technology of the age. A system with 64k sized win
11.
8086 Segmented Memory was a good idea(owl.billpg.com)
71 points by billpg 3mo ago|148 comments
12.
Will We Run Out of Unicodes?(owl.billpg.com)
5 points by billpg 4mo ago|0 comments
13.
by billpg 4mo ago
Thanks, and that POSIX link is exactly the one I expected someone to bring up. The key point is that POSIX does not actually define a real, physical epoch, and it explicitly avoids doing so. POSIX says every day is exactly 86400 seconds, le
14.
Let's Standardize the 1970 Epoch(github.com)
2 points by billpg 4mo ago|2 comments
15.
by billpg 4mo ago
I forget where I encountered it, but I've seen similar encodings that eliminated the possibility of many possible encodings for the same number by making the length part of the value. Values 0-127 are a single byte, but if that first b
16.
Oh No! I've invented SVG badly!(owl.billpg.com)
4 points by billpg 4mo ago|0 comments
17.
by billpg 4mo ago
Do any formats using ZIP as the underlying format use ZIP comments for metadata? Unless there's a lot of compressors leaving "Zip file generated by MySuperZipper™" then I imagine any comments left were probably done for a goo
18.
Let's Standardize the 1970 Epoch(github.com)
4 points by billpg 4mo ago|0 comments
19.
by billpg 5mo ago
True, but I wanted this to be something anyone could do with equipment they might already have lying around and also get a feel for what gravity is actually doing. Switching on a machine that displays "9.8m/s²" isn't tha
20.
by billpg 5mo ago
I had a similar reaction when learning 8086 assembly and finding the correct way to do `if x==y` was a CMP instruction which performed a subtraction and set only the flags. (The book had a section with all the branch instructions to use for
21.
Let's Measure Gravity(owl.billpg.com)
2 points by billpg 5mo ago|3 comments
22.
2001: A TV Series(owl.billpg.com)
1 points by billpg 5mo ago|0 comments
23.
Are we going to run out of Unicodes?(owl.billpg.com)
2 points by billpg 5mo ago|0 comments
24.
Let's Standardize the 1970 Epoch(github.com)
2 points by billpg 6mo ago|0 comments
25.
by billpg 6mo ago
It's a cookbook!
26.
by billpg 6mo ago
An earlier draft had a section discussing how IPv4x would work with NAT routers. Essentially, an IPv4x packet would be a UDP/IPv4 packet using a port number (84) that's been allocated to IPv4x. Old routers would be a normal UDP pa
27.
by billpg 6mo ago
le sigh Thanks though. Your comment really cheered me up.
28.
by billpg 6mo ago
"I bet one _could_ accelerate IPv6 deployment a lot by have a standard ..." ahem https://owl.billpg.com/sixgate/
29.
by billpg 6mo ago
Yes. The router in your home would absolutely need to support IPv4x if you wanted to make use of the extended address space, just like how in the real world your home router needs to support NAT if you want to make use of shared IP.
30.
by billpg 6mo ago
My point is that we're still dependent on IPv4. For all the progress IPv6 has made, no-one is willing to switch IPv4 off yet. Until we do, we're still constrained by all the problems IPv4 has.

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